Blown Power Supplies

[p.b57]

Hi there. I,m new to the forum. I built my first computer and for some reason the power supplies have blown twice. All the components are new. The first time I was booting up the cooling fans slowed down and then just died.The power supply was dead. The company that I bought the case from replaced the power supply.After replacing the power supply it seemed like everything was ok so I loaded my windows program. The next day I was loading a program and the computer died instantly in the middle of the process. There isn't any power at all now. This is the 2nd power supply damaged. I was wondering if anybody has come across this type of problem. I would appreciate any feedback. Below is a list of the main components in my computer.

Motherboard & Processor: Epox 8rda+333/333 w/amd athlon xp 2400+
Ram: pc2700 512mb
Hard drive: 60 gb maxtor
Video card: Megaspeed GeForce4 MX440 128mb DDR w/TV-Out
Power supply: Okia switching power supply (420W MAX)

[akif]

Welcome to the forums.

Here is a good article on choosing a power supply.....

http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/p...ply/default.asp

And here is a chart of power requirements for computer compnents...

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/maxpc/index_cases.htm

Thanx to mjc :)

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

Often the power supplies that come with a case are garbage. You can tell partly by the weight of it: heavy is generally good, light is generally bad. You can also tell by looking at the Amps on the volt legs, particularly the 12 volt leg. If that is a low number, it is likely to be a pretty crummy PS. If you got a good deal on the case, figure the PS is just an extra piece of packing that came with it....:rolleyes:

[p.b57]

Thanks. I think the power supply is junk. I will get a quality power supply and try that.

[Art2M]

If after the third PSU you installed and it got blown again, unmount your peripheral cards, RAM and mainboard from the casing. Re-assemble your PC again. Some improperly seated cards or modules might be short-circuiting some components that lead to some low-quality SPS or PSU to get damage or malfunction.

A good quality/design switching power supply should automatically shut itself off when short circuit is detected preventing further damage to the system.

[p.b57]

Thanks for the advice. I replaced the power supply with a 360W enlight and it has been running for 4 days with no problem. The 2 previous PS were the same brand and were very light in weight.
Thanks,
Paul